- THE EXHIBITION
Vespa. Italian icon
June 11 – August 30, 2026
Eighty years after its patent was filed, an exhibition showcases a symbol of Italian culture around the world. The exhibition explores the Vespa’s transformation from a means of transport to a cultural icon and collector’s item. Essential models, gadgets, magazines, movie posters, and billboards create a visual atlas intertwining images, personal memory, and popular culture. From Marco Fumagalli’s personal archive emerges a portrait of an infinite Vespa: reproduced, reinterpreted, and celebrated by artists, photographers, and advertisers.
A journey that explores the automobile as space, form, and imagination, retracing its evolution from 1802 to the present. The exhibition brings together several core works: forty-four works that combine text and images and construct a history of the automobile through often little-known models; two video projections presenting, on one side, a set of technical drawings and, on the other, a sequence of naturalistic drawings of the automobiles; original notes and sketches made by the artist during his studies; and ten 1:10 scale car models from the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
- DELOREAN
Back to the Future
From Thursday, June 11th to Sunday, August 30th, the National Automobile Museum presents a tribute to the eighty-year history of the Vespa, a symbol of culture and an icon of style and innovation in Italian design. The exhibition features archival materials from collector Marco Fumagalli, whose passion has created an extraordinary archive of the countless ways in which the Vespa has been described, reproduced, and reinterpreted.
The Vespa is one of the most recurring presences in Italian visual culture. Throughout the twentieth century, it has permeated advertising, cinema, photography, and graphic design, gradually becoming embedded in the collective imagination. Starting with Marco Fumagalli’s extensive collection, the exhibition explores its transformation from a functional object to an icon capable of inspiring practices of compulsive accumulation and cataloging.
The story begins with his desire to own a Vespa 50 Special Revival, which he saw in a Corriere della Sera supplement in the summer of 1991. His initial fascination with mechanics sparked a systematic collection that initially focused on vehicles, eventually encompassing all the models produced for the Italian market and their variants destined for foreign markets. Over time, it expanded to include models, gadgets, memorabilia, posters, magazines, advertisements, and movie posters.
The exhibition presents a personal archive through a dense layering of images on the walls, in which the Vespa continues to reappear and multiply across different languages and contexts. The exhibition thus takes the form of a visual atlas in which the continuous reproduction of the Vespa image reveals a desire to preserve its traces and organize them in a system free of hierarchies, where each element participates and contributes to the construction of a collection.
- THE VESPE
The models on display
The common thread running through this story is fourteen Vespa models, divided into six thematic areas – THE BEGINNINGS, THE SUCCESS, THE REVOLUTION, THE EIGHTIES, THE NEW COURSE, THE VESPA CLUB OF ITALY – which accompany the visitor through the evolution of the famous scooter and the historical and cultural context that accompanied its success.
Vespa 98 MP6L, Vespa V15T, Vespa 125 Sport, Vespa 125 V31T (Vacanze Romane), Vespa 125 VN2T, Vespa 150 GS (VS3), Vespa 90 SS, Vespa 180 Rally, Vespa PX (prima serie), Vespa T5, Vespa 50 Revival, Vespa Elettrica, Vespa GTS 310 80th, Vespa 946.
- ART
Mimmo Rotella
A special focus is given to the works of Mimmo Rotella, a master of décollage and a leading figure in post-World War II Italian art. His works reinterpret the iconographic universe of the Vespa through the language of layering and visual memory. Rotella’s works interact with photographs, posters, and advertising materials, helping to illustrate how the image of the Vespa became part of the international cultural and artistic imagination.
Fifty years later, Automobili proves to be a surprisingly timely work. In a present marked by ecological transition, the redefinition of mobility models, and a radical rethinking of the relationship between humanity, technology, and the environment, the “incomplete future” evoked by the album appears as a powerful key to interpreting our times. The exhibition thus arises as an interpretative device: not a nostalgic celebration, but a field of tension between past and present. The songs become narrative matrices that activate a plurality of languages—automobiles, archival materials, images, sounds, illustrations—to construct a layered narrative, capable of traversing history, pop culture, industry, the imagination, and social critique.
- ON SHOW
On display
On display are original materials from the archive of Antonio Bagnoli – nephew of Roberto Roversi – and dedicated to the universe of Automobili and the collaboration between Lucio Dalla and the poet: theatre programmes and posters for the theatrical performance Il futuro dell’automobile (1976), handwritten notebooks by Roberto Roversi with preparatory texts and outlines, autographed letters between Dalla and Roversi, documents relating to the request for the pseudonym “Norisso” from SIAE, articles and interviews published in the press of the time, as well as original song lyrics and audiovisual materials taken from the television programme Automobili, broadcast in 1977. A heterogeneous corpus that conveys the cultural, artistic and political climate in which one of the most radical and visionary projects of Italian songwriting of the 1970s was born.
But also a time machine: its angular forms collide with the most recent trends scattered across the landscape, triggering a sort of temporal paradox. Fiat Panda = DeLorean DMC-12. Hot Panda is a tribute to slowness, hard work, and simplicity (the Panda is an icon of all this) at a time of fundamental change for the key players in this project. Automobiles are transforming, responding to new mobility challenges, ecological emergencies, new urban planning models, technological evolution, the availability of materials and components, and geopolitics. But at the same time, photography is also radically changing, increasingly less imbued with the surplus of objectivity that had decreed its success before the advent of digital and AI. Hot Panda is a new journey through Italy. In the original, after all, Goethe wrote: “The purpose of this magnificent journey of mine is not to deceive myself, but to know myself in relation to objects.” (Francesco Zanot)
- ON SHOW
The cars
Alongside the documents, two cars—the 1932 Alfa Romeo Tipo B P3 and the 1967 Autobianchi Bianchina 4-seater—displayed side by side, illustrate the cultural trajectory of the Italian automobile: from heroic and visionary symbol to a pervasive and contradictory presence in contemporary modernity. The former directly references the epic dimension evoked in the song “Nuvolari” and, more generally, the narrative of speed as a modern myth.
It is the car of racing, of individual heroism, of the Mille Miglia, and of the great drivers celebrated on the album: an extreme machine, a symbol of an Italy that builds its technological and sporting imagery through legendary figures and collective feats. The Bianchina, however, represents the other side of the story: the popular, accessible car that became part of Italians’ daily lives during the economic boom. It is the car of families, of the suburbs, of vacations, and of mass motorization, which Dalla and Roversi critically examine in Automobili, amidst urban alienation, traffic jams, consumption, and the transformation of the social landscape.
- SOUND
Sound Reconstruction of the Monaco - Trossi Engine
The installation recreates the sound of the legendary Monaco–Trossi engine, unheard since 1935, through a sophisticated audio reconstruction using cutting-edge neural synthesis techniques. The algorithmic sonification process, conceived and developed by MuseeX, combines a scientific and creative approach that integrates historical sources, engineering data, and generative models. The result is an immersive and realistic sound model that evokes the authentic voice of a car lost to time. Reliving the past through sound lies at the heart of MuseeX’s research: each project resurfaces what has been forgotten, hidden, or lost, transforming it into a soundscape that gives voice to memory.
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Acknowledgements
CARLO FELICE TROSSI. Unfinished Hero
Edited by Giordano Bruno Guerri
With Francesco Foppiano, Davide Lorenzone, Ilaria Pani
Artistic Director Maurizio Cilli
The National Automobile Museum thanks all the lenders: Andrea Ghisalberti, Lopresto Collection, Alex von Mòzer, STELLANTIS Europe SPA | HERITAGE (Alfa Romeo Museum), Mercedes-Benz Classic, Umberto Panini APS Maserati Collection, Scooter & Lambretta Museum, GAVS – Group of Friends of Historic Aircraft – Turin Section, R.E. San Giorgi, Yacht Club Italiano
Photo credits: Sella Foundation, Photography from the Archive, Zagari © The Spitzley Archive, Varagine.it Historical Photographic Archive of the City of Varazze
Video content: Archivio Luce Cinecittà
Thanks to Maurizio Fracassi for his valuable support and generous donation, thanks to which the Carlo Felice Trossi archive has become part of the MAUTO Documentation Center collection.
Special thanks to Gianluigi Ricuperati.
Project partners: Banca Generali Private, MuseeX
- THE VOLUME
Carlo Felice Trossi. Unfinished Hero (Skira publisher)
The monograph on Carlo Felice Trossi is a journey between myth and matter, exploring the figure of a pilot, designer, aviator, and free spirit of his time. Modern and visionary, refined and unconventional, Trossi emerges through intimate traces, bold projects, and stylistic details. Giordano Bruno Guerri reconstructs his complexity, intertwining his public life and private tensions, creating the portrait of a timeless hero, suspended between courage, technique, and beauty.
Edited by
Giordano Bruno Guerri
With
Francesco Foppiano
Davide Lorenzone
Ilaria Pani
Artistic Director
Maurizio Cilli
- PARTNERSHIP
Under the patronage of:
With the support of:
Project Partner:
The initiative is part of the program:
Download the Comunicato Stampa.
With the support of:
Under the patronage of
Seregno City
In collaboration with
In collaboration with
Download Comunicato Stampa.
- PROJECTS AND MEETINGS
Public Program
Some of the scheduled meetings – all free and upon reservation – develop from the themes addressed by the temporary exhibitions and research activities of the Museum’s Conservation and Restoration Centre and Documentation Centre.
